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Personally, I think there are plenty of natural common-sense cures that are better than their counter-parts. Unless my headache is dehabilitating, I will not take Tylenol simply because I know there are brain chemicals whose entire purpose is numbing pain (such as headaches). By taking Tylenol, I'm telling my body that it no longer needs to serve this purpose, and I thereby become dependant on a drug. His infomercial was obviously recieved better by me (someone who hates drug dependance) than someone who takes drugs daily to relieve whatever feeling they may be having. Before I even thought about buying the book, however, I did a little research. I saw his FDA and FTC lawsuits and I saw that he'd had jailtime. I even read similar stories talking about how much fluff was in his book. With this information, I chose not to buy the book.
I don't think the issue is that he's being misleading, but that people are too stupid to research things before they do or buy them. I sure as hell wouldn't go bungee jumping or sky diving without doing a lot of research about it. I'd like to think most people were that way. It's a skill called Critical Thinking, something I've made many TFP posts about.
The legality of "banning" Trudeau is a fine line that I think you're both too far from. What IF the FDA were truly corrupt and 'natural cures' WERE the way to go? The government should not be able to take away that free speech right to "sell the truth." By banning his book and his infomercials, its censorship of speech. Unless it can be proved patently false, you shouldn't dismiss it as quackery. (And trust me, if it is truly Quakery, proving it false is as easy as 1-2-3)
On the flip side, we've got to be able to create standards of medicine so that we can trust doctors and pharmacists to give us something that will not explicitly harm us. I'd have to devolve into the days of "mystics" who count the bones on the ground and tell us that the Gods will cure our disease within 5 days. We've come a long way from that and I'd like to keep the standards of medicine what they are.
I think the solution is stronger controls on all informercials. The latest one I've seen is the "Sauna Belt" that sits on your belly at like 110 degrees and "burns away that excess fat." In reality, it's just taking off water weight, but they've cleverly worded it so that they never actually claim it makes you be more healthy, only have less weight on your belly. I think the only way to enforce stricter standards without unduly burdening companies selling things, the burden should be placed on the NETWORK to verify every claim. If they're going to accept money for advertisements, they are responsible for the claims made in commercials just as much as the advertisers. In this way, it becomes a self-policing environment rather than one in which the FTC has to watch every informerical in existance to determine truthfulness.
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"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel
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